Jackie Young and the Quiet Art of Winning While the Planet Burns A dispatch from the end-of-days desk, somewhere between the Eurozone and the next recession The name Jackie Young doesn’t scream geopolitics. It isn’t chanted in Davos corridors, whispered in Brussels backrooms, or hashtagged by tinfoil influencers predicting the collapse of fiat currency. And…
PARIS—While delegates at UNESCO politely clapped for yet another PowerPoint on “sport as soft power,” Skylar Diggins-Smith was 7,500 kilometers away in Dallas, draining a contested three over two defenders and reminding the planet that soft power sometimes wears size-10 Nikes and has a mean crossover. The box score will tell you she logged 25…
The Las Vegas Aces are not a basketball team; they are a geopolitical weather balloon released above the Mojave Desert, drifting across time zones to see who on Earth still believes in fairy-tale endings. On paper they’re merely the reigning WNBA champions, but in the grand casino of international soft power, they’ve become a high-roller’s…
Tina Charles, the 6’4″ walking referendum on American exceptionalism, has just reminded the planet that gravity remains a negotiable concept—provided you possess a 34-inch vertical and a passport thick enough to double as body armor. While the rest of us were busy doom-scrolling through supply-chain memes and energy-crisis cosplay, Charles quietly collected her fourth EuroLeague…
By the time the rest of the planet had finished arguing about the correct pronunciation of “Omicron,” the Chicago Sky quietly won a WNBA championship. That sentence alone should tell you how geopolitically lopsided our attention spans have become. While COP26 delegates in Glasgow were busy swapping business cards printed on recycled oat milk cartons,…
